Chris is 17 in 1999, and that involves a lot of things. Struggling with having her sexual identity recognized, struggling to have just about anything recognized, and struggling to handle her utter elation at working at any teenager’s dream at the time; the coolest record store in town. After the lead singer of the store’s headliner goes missing, the rest of the crew brings Chris down to the basement to reveal the real deal with the store; they’re not in a secret band, but a secret fight club.

This time:

As Chris continues to freak out, Dolores and the rest of the girls manage to give her enough confidence to say a rather blind yes to joining their teenage girl team of vigilantes. When a group of douchebags are causing trouble, the wrong kind of guys giving a girl band trouble, creepy stalkers, or general no-goodery, this crew is there to come kick some ass and keep the peace, all with the proper training and sparring. Chris tries to help brainstorm on where to find Rosie, the missing singer from Stegosour, the headliner, and cracks some deductive reasoning on a place they might find her hiding. Unfortunately, Dolores tosses her suggestion out the window noting that of course that’s the first place they looked, and that Chris is just a big heap of dead weight. This doesn’t go over well with the rest of the girls, but it’s enough to shake Chris’s confidence. While she’s home and practicing some self-medication with a large tub of ice cream, we see some of the practical training the fight club gives; smashing some boards of wood, beating a punching bag, and in the middle of all of this, Chris gets a call from Maggie to go talk about everything that happened at the local diner. Chris has no idea if this is a date, but Maggie wastes no time opening up to her; after apologizing for Dolores’ major ‘tude, she reveals the utter rush she got of being able to punch out the patriarchy, and gives Chris another last-minute pep-talk to give the club another chance. As Chris and Maggie head home for a night, a group of literally shady figures with flashlights appear at a potential break-in, and Maggie leaps into action, with a little literal boost from Chris. With a successful battle cry, Maggie takes out the three culprits single-handedly, tying them up without a problem. As she shines the light to see who they were dealing with, we see the three members of Stegosour from before, leaving only one question; if they’re breaking in and causing trouble, where’s Rosie?

Reed Strong’s Strong Read:

The plot finally starts to show itself in this issue, but not without still a hearty dose of charm and wit from the characters we were introduced to the last time. The fight club itself is still a little nebulously defined, but the idea of simple teenage girl vigilantes is a fun idea in both concept and execution. Chris is still a relatable lead with specific anxieties, mostly leveled at herself as they can be at that or nearly any other age. One insult tossed her way can’t be undone by even the whole group backing her up, and this is something that’s delightfully and unfortunately accurate to how these things tend to go. It’s not always going to reverse something with an apology, or even the right people taking the right things; when someone says the wrong thing, the target is always going to have to deal with this the most in their own head. Chris wants to be liked, and she wants to like where she’s at. But when even a little confidence is barreled over, she’s left without any good idea of what to do, especially when she’s surrounded by an expected level of competence and active practice by the group around her. We see the gym underneath the record store, and we get to see enough of the other girls, well, fighting. It’s all gorgeous, and it’s all compelling enough to really mark enough of a specific story for this to draw the right people in. I can’t wait to see where this is all going, and I know there’s going to be a lot of charming and awkward sputtering along the way.